Thursday, May 25, 2006

War

2061 AD. The Americans are at it with the Chinese.Both countries wanted the good life; Mother Earth could just nottake it anymore. The Chinese had been growing at an astronomical 9% every year since 1979 – it did not take them long to give the Americans a run for their money in the battle for oil and water. The Indians were left far behind: 9% is way more than 7%, especially when compounded.

The Average Chinese got fatter; obesity became a problem – it was indeed a problem of plenty. The Chinese started to demand what the American demands now: high quality junk food; massive sales with prices marked down (after a massive mark-up earlier); a culture governed by little pieces of paper and plastic cards – and fingerprints and dna.

The convenience driven modern society started to attach DNA to bank accounts. Money could be withdrawn only if you had the right DNA on you. This would also require the correct finger-print, making the entire process of forgery very difficult, and the process of withdrawing cash a tremendous hassle. Some firms tried doing away with the finger-print verification, but that led to lots of barbers and spouses being sued.

Let us stop the digression. Let’s talk about what we set out wanting to talk about. Wars.

President Heorhe Shrub of the United States was a descendant of Bobby Fischer. Premier Hau Taul ( is a China-Man) of China carried a computer with the power of deep-blue in his shirt pocket. The Indian Prime Minister, Venkaraman Karim-Patel was born in Vijaywada, a southern city (medium sized) of 30 million. He was born into a middle class family. His family saw that he was an exceptionally talented chess Player – and made him skip school to explore the wonderful world of chess. Some 900,000 other children from Vijaywada went to a crammery (where they were made to memorize each and every game of chess ever played between 2 human beings), 10,000 made it to the Indian Institute of Chess, and twelve made it to the National Chess Institute. And finally, some 20 students from all over India played amongst themselves to determine the new Prime Minister of India.

Somewhere in 2020, people decided that war was pretty pointless. By 2015, the United States army stopped recruiting new marines: they had robots to do all the dirty fighting anyway! They started to pump more money into manufacturing new robots to kill people. The Chinese government had always been working on robots to fight and kill people.The Americans, on realizing that all their investment in new robots (that could kill) was pointless (as their enemies also had robots too), decided that enough was enough. The American corporations had to write of all the robots as a big loss (attempts were made ofselling them as butlers – until some robots malfunctioned and shot their owners dead instead.)

The American Government (under pressure from loss making American corporations) got the two and a quarter main powers in the world: Itself, China and India to a round table conference in India. In the historic declaration (the Bhatinda Accord), it was decided that war be abolished, since it was no longer economically viable. A study conducted jointly by University of Chicago, TsinghuaUniversity and KanpurDehatUniversity was cited – showing a correlation between the military might of a country and the number of chess victories in a year.Chess was accepted asthe new “war”. The premier of each nation would play chess against the premier of the nation they were warring against.

Nuclear Weapons were dumped on Mars. The Martians would never have a chance. They would blow themselves up long before evolving. Just like we almost did.

An intriguing side effect (which no one foresaw) was the re-emergence of Russia as a world power.Those unethical bastards probably cloned Kramnik. And the American corporates- curse them - they sell plastic chess sets made in India and China all around the world.